system libname.la vs local libname.a

Using libtool and automake to build statically linked executable from
multiple convencience libs on linux that has both gcc 2.96 and gcc 3.2
installed....

There are several prebuild libraries that must get linked into the final
executable as well. Let's call one of them libname.a

There is a "name" pkgs already installed on the host. This package has a
libname.a and libname.so and libname.la in system LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

autoconf and the resulting configure seem to be accurate.
makefiles generated from this seem to be accurate...

however, all the of libconvenience.la in my project have references to the
system version of libname.la instead of a plain jane libname.la (or -lname)
as it appears in the makefiles, makefile.am, configure.ac configure, etc...

SO... eventually the build fails because the system libname.la brings in all
of these other dependencies that break everything....

Does anyone know how i can ensure my local libname.a gets used?
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